


father's arms

by meritmut



Series: i loved you well, when we were young [17]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Kid Fic, Lazy Mornings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 11:54:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He could never have predicted this, and in these moments is never more aware of the different paths his life might have taken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	father's arms

There's an elbow digging into his side, wild hair stuck in his mouth and a damp patch of drool somewhere near his right armpit, and Loki is fairly sure that he's never been happier in his life. There is, he muses, no sweeter sight to wake to on a winter morning than that of his middle daughter curled up against his chest like a cat, her breath warm against the arm he has looped around her tiny form. Admittedly, he could do without the constant fidgeting - Ari takes after her mother, never passes a night in the same position- but he runs his thumb over her elbow and she shivers in her sleep, shuffling closer to him to bury her head in the crook of his shoulder, and it's a small enough price to pay for bliss.

She mumbles something unintelligible in her feather-soft voice and Loki stifles a laugh, reaches down to pull the heavy furs back up over the both of them and bringing Ari close to share the heat that eludes the rest of the airy chamber. It'd been much warmer last night when he and Sif had turned in, he’s sure of it, but then again they’d also been alone together. It had only been during the small hours that Ari had slipped into her parents’ room to wiggle herself between them, and at some point after that Sif must have kicked the covers off again. She’s pushed herself to the opposite side of the bed so that several inches separate her from its other two occupants; she lies on her side, only the smooth dipping curve of her back and the dark tangle of her hair spilling in rivers across the pillow visible to Loki. He’s following the slope of her spine with his gaze, long since memorised on mornings not unlike this one, when the small lump curled against him stirs again and her eyes flutter open in a sleepy blur of slate-green and thick lashes.

Her pale, heart-shaped face is no more than three inches away from his and the wide smile that splits her features at the sight of her father (universally agreed to be her favourite person in all the nine realms and beyond) is mirrored instantly by Loki’s own: he marvels at the swiftness, the completeness of the warmth that radiates through him at the unreserved adoration in his daughter’s eyes.

It’s not something he'd ever experienced until he became a parent to these strange and delightful creatures, who were in the beginning as unknown to him as the stars and no less astonishing; what astounds him more, though, is how a series of perfectly arbitrary combinations of himself and Sif could turn out this way, each bearing traits that reflect their parents and yet at the same time a triumvirate of entirely new things that Loki must learn, must familiarise himself with even as he might some ancient book. It’s the same manner of challenge, that of knowledge to be acquired, but every time he thinks he has a handle on the quick-flitting minds of his children they prove him wrong and usually several steps behind them.

He likes that about them, all else besides. It reminds him of Sif.

Ari beams at him and scoots back a little, until her back connects with her mother’s.

“Another nightmare last night?” he asks, and she nods mournfully. “Of what did you dream?”

“Fire,” replies Ari with a little shrug. During the day she isn’t bothered by them, but in the hours of darkness her dreams are enough to have her creeping into bed with her parents regularly. Sometimes Loki will sit up with her and talk her through the flashes of flame and thunder, explain why she should fear neither, and one night Sif – ever the lightest sleeper – had gone through to their daughter’s room during a storm to find Thor there with her, answering her nerves with gentle reassurances that the tempest couldn’t harm her. After that night Ari hadn’t dreamed of storms again, and had grown much fonder of her uncle. Sometimes she might even be coaxed out onto the terrace during to watch the rains wash down over Asgard’s glittering spires, flickering white and blue in the lightning: usually Sif will hold her, and Ari could never fear anything in her mother’s arms.

With a soft _mmph_ noise Sif rolls over, blinking sleep from her eyes, and curls one arm around Ari’s midriff to pull her close. Watching them nestle close together Loki feels that warmth flush through him once more, overtaking all else with an overwhelming sense of contentment. He could never have predicted this, and in these moments is never more aware of the different paths his life might have taken. He is fortunate that his fate should have unfurled like this anyway.

And then, with a burst of laughter and running footsteps, the delicate-wrought peace of the hour is blown away by the entrance of their elder daughter, the five-year-old whirlwind of energy. She skids across the room to dive in between her parents and shuffle herself into her father’s arms, where she settles like a living brazier. Sif snorts at the disgruntled look on Loki’s face as he extricates one arm from her hair, a crackling ink-coloured mass, and pulls her into a more comfortable hug.

“Good morning to you too,” he can’t keep the smile from his face any more than his wife can. Nine years into this parenting lark and still the mere sight of their girls curled up between them, safe and warm and content, is enough to have the pair of them smiling like the young fools they haven't been in aeons.

“Where’s your brother?” Sif asks, yawning, and their secondborn shrugs.

“I dunno. Asleep?”

Blinking, Brenna shifts herself upright and gives in to a yawn of her own, a jawbone-clicking, eye-crinkling contortion that makes Loki wonder if she hasn’t spent half the night up playing einherjar with her brother again, eager as she is to prove to them all that she’s the finer warrior than he. Ullr seems not to carek, it’s hardly a secret that he takes after his father when it comes to warcraft. Already he shows great promise as an archer, whereas Brenna adores the wooden sword that’s all Sif will allow her near - yet, though while she may have been reckless to a fault in her own youth Sif is as protective of her children as she ever was of the princes.

Ullr might have his father's proficiency with ranged weaponry and Brenna her mother's wiry toughness, but Ari's is the smile that melts the hearts of all those upon whom she bestows it, and her father is the favoured victim. For all she’s yet to celebrate her fourth birthday she's more than bright enough to realise how much of a pushover Loki becomes when she bats her dark eyelashes at him - she’s learnt it from the devious dame he calls his lady, he’d wager. Sif knows how to play him, how to meet the venom that still occasionally drips from his tongue with a lash of her own, and until the arrival of the girls she was the only one who could. Now...now there are three of them, mother and daughters more often than not a united force he has no hope of withstanding.

Or they were, at least. Loki suspects that Ari will come to have her own designs for pestering him soon enough - the cunning streak can’t have skipped _all_ his children, and though Ullr and Brenna take far more after Sif their youngest seems to have inherited more of him, from her green eyes to her more reserved demeanour. There never was a more inquisitive child but both her grandmother and her uncle have commented at how quiet the little one seems in public. Shyness, they say. Loki thinks differently. Observance, it seems to him, patience, absorbing all around her with those enormous eyes of hers and filing it away to pore over later like a book, hungry to learn the world around her.

 _She's like you,_ Sif tells him once, her mouth made soft with amusement and pride, _Fates help us all, another Loki._

He'd grinned at that, tucked her under his arm and pressed his cheek to the dark crown of her head.

_I don't think even the Fates can help us now._


End file.
